So no one wants to buy your song.
Your book.
Your newspaper.
And you don’t know why.
It’s because you’re selling 20th Century content to a 21st Century audience.
I am not saying you have to be on the web, mobile or shit like that (though it may help.)
I am saying that you are selling the wrong stuff.
Whatever media you created, you need to take it apart.
Break it.
And then sell it.
WTF?
Here’s the fuck.
Finished songs, completed books, written news stories are the real old media.
And no one wants to pay for it.
What we will pay for is the process.
The bits and pieces.
a familiar example:
We won’t buy your album. We’ll download it and you won’t make a dime.
But if we like it you can sell us:
a concert ticket
unmixed tracks I can remix myself
a “making of” DVD
I’ld even pay to be a part of a live video chat with you where you discuss the album and take questions…
But pay for an album? Forget about it.
It’s the same with the news.
The news is like the time. I can just ask somebody for it or look on my cellphone.
But I’m not paying for it.
But I’d pay plenty for just the pieces of a story I care about.
Access to all of a reporters notes? I’d pay.
Full access to the unedited interviews of a story I care about? I’d pay.
The ability to have conversations with the reporters on specific story?
Daily or weekly followup of a story I think matters?
Here’s my wallet.
But pay for just the news?
Pa-leeze.
To make money in the 21st Century you don’t just need to create great art.
You have to be willing to take it apart.
Got it?
[Still lost?]
more tomorrow.
